Chapter 14

Reagan:

The voice in my head was calm, filled with peace like I’d never known before. How could a voice feel peace? I didn’t know what happened in my body, but it felt like a storm. One with constant rain and pushing wind. Even so, I liked it. It was comfortable.

I’d always thought of Elena as my other half. This, this felt like so much more than being a twin.

I dropped down from my tiptoes, releasing Noah as he did the same for me. Even when we stopped touching, it felt as if our hands still clasped together. It would be like that forever now.

“Well,” Noah said before clearing his throat. “It figures that my Mend would be someone I can’t go ten minutes without fighting.”

I wanted to suggest that had been the tension from our souls. They’d wanted nothing more than for us to touch, to lock this in. It could have been for all I knew. I didn’t know how this worked for other people.

“What do we do now?” I asked. “What does this mean?”

“You know what it means. We’re… us. That’s it.”

I hadn’t decided if I would leave the pack yet. This had really only been a place to rest until I found my own way, because I didn’t really belong there. Now, I couldn’t leave my Mend, and I wouldn’t have. Noah was alpha of the pack, so he really couldn’t leave.

“What changes?”

“I don’t think anything has to change,” Noah said. “I’ll have to tell the council, but that’s it. No one can make you leave now. No one would dare ask something so cruel.”

Of course they wouldn’t have. Even prison sentences made accommodations for the Mended. More visits, housing close by, and constant contact. People could have died otherwise. When you lacked that part of your soul, sometimes it lost the will to go on.

“Hell of a time for you, huh?” I laughed awkwardly. “You’re about to get a mate, and you went and got yourself a Mend too. Lots… lots of stuff.”

Noah nodded. “We should go tell the kids. They need to know you’re staying.”

I took my bat again, then followed Noah out of the building.

I supposed I should have been happy to be this lucky and have a Mend that had few complications. So many liked living with their other halves, and that got tough when people started getting married. Especially when people had more than one Mend. Magic brought us together, but it was our job to figure it out after that. Noah would get a mate, and she would live with us. When I eventually got married, the house was big enough that they could live in the house too. I kind of hoped I ended up with a wolf. At least I would have been the only odd one out in the pack that way.

“Am I officially part of the pack now?” I asked, bouncing around Noah on our way home. “Do I go to your moon sacrifices?”

“Anything you want,” he said. “But you can’t run with me. I run all night on those instances.”

I felt a twinge of pain, knowing that meant so much to Noah and I would never get to do it. I could watch though. I could sit there and watch him run.

The voice in my head felt weirdly smug. I wanted to glare when it gave me the idea to lace my arm with Noah’s. Just because we’d Mended didn’t mean we would be getting cuddly. I still hardly knew him, though our souls felt like they’d been there in the other’s lives since day one. That wasn’t the same as knowing a person. Noah was a stranger. One that I would have to learn to love, but still a stranger.

It was weird, knowing that I was linked with a person, essentially against my will. The gods had made this choice, thinking that the other of us was a perfect match. I didn’t see it.

“Are you upset?” I asked.

“What? Why would I be upset?”

I looked him up and down. I could read so much more than I could before. I saw the tension in his shoulders, and the way his jaw tensed as he sank deep into thought.

“Because you have to keep me,” I said. “And I feel like there’s no one you want to keep other than the kids.”

“True,” Noah responded. “I don’t want anyone. I don’t want a mate, and I would have been fine if I’d never Mended.” My chest burned. “That doesn’t mean I’m upset to have done it.”

I stared straight ahead. “You don’t mind that it’s me?”

“Why would I mind? Why are you worse than anyone else?”

I hadn’t expected him to be excited about it, but I’d always pictured my Mend being a little more enthusiastic.

“I don’t know. Because I am.” Because I couldn’t even save my sister. Because I’d let her die so I could live.

My life moved on when Elena’s couldn’t. She’d only been dead a little while, and I’d already found a new place to live. I’d found my other half. It seemed so deeply unfair, and I had to live with it.

“You aren’t,” Noah said as we reached the house. He stopped by the door, turning to me, staring blankly over my shoulder. “This is happening no matter what we feel about it, so we should make the best of it.”

“The best of it,” I repeated. “My sister is dead, and you’ve probably never had a friend before. I guess that makes us best friends, right? Since there’s no one else for us?”

“Is that how that works?”

“I think it is in this case. The only person I love is gone. The gods just gave us to each other. What does that tell you?”

It took Noah a long time to answer. “What the hell do I even do with a best friend?”

He went into the house, and I went with him.

The kids had already gotten home and gathered in the living room. Pippa sat on the couch with a book while the others had taken up space on the floor. Jamie and Lizzie had both fallen asleep, curled up together on a big chair. I felt a little pang of jealousy, knowing that they’d had each other for so long and knowing that they loved each other more than anything else in the world. Mended always felt like that. You became family stronger than even blood. When I looked at Noah, I couldn’t imagine him loving me like that.

“We need you all at the table,” Noah said, nodding toward it. I took a seat at the corner, and he picked the one right next to me.

The kids followed without question, getting up from their spots and hurrying over. Pippa took the longest, insisting she finish the page before she came over. She sat at the other end of the table.

“Is this about your announcement?” Pippa asked, noticeably not looking at her older brother. “It would have been nice if you could tell your family you were leaving before you told the rest of the pack, but whatever. It’s fine that I had to put on these damn leg prisons to march down there to find out I would be alone for I don’t even know how long.”

Noah sighed. “I didn’t know I was leaving until right before I said it. Sorry.”

I hadn’t gotten the chance to ask about that. Noah had to go find himself a mate, and that meant leaving home. The idea of him leaving right after our Mending ignited anxiety. Did it not bother him too? If it did, he didn’t let it show.

“Is that what you wanted to tell us?” Pippa asked. “Do we need to make plans?”

“Yeah, but there’s something else too.” Noah looked to me, and I thought he would take my hand or something. He didn’t. “It’s about Reagan and me. We’ve, uh, Mended.”

Pippa stared in shock, but the other kids all started cheering and jumping up from their seats. Lizzie came over to give me a big hug while the others jumped up and down.

“Does this mean Reagan is staying forever?” Clare asked.

“Yes,” Noah said, fast, his voice like gravel. Then he took a moment, his face paling before he looked to me. “If she wants to. Do you want to?”

My heart felt different when it thudded, hard and fast. It beat stronger than it did before, I thought.

“I do,” I said. My home was with Noah, wherever he went.

“Are you gonna get bunkbeds like me and Lizzie?” Jamie asked his brother. “They’re great. If you have bad dreams, then you can climb down the ladder and get in bed with Reagan. I do that all the time.”

Lizzie left me to go take his hand. “And we’ll always have bunkbeds, even when we get married to other people. No offence to whoever you marry, but I’m gonna be better at making you forget your bad dreams.”

“For sure,” Jamie agreed. “No one else is gonna figure out what kind of bad dream I had just by looking at me. They’re definitely not gonna know what to do to make me breathe again.”

I looked at Noah, worried. His face didn’t move. He didn’t say a word. Yet, I knew exactly what he communicated to me. There was nothing to be done, his eyes said.

“I’m happy for you,” Pippa said to Noah, finally speaking. “I think this is really good. Really good for you,” she added.

“Thanks,” he said.

She sat up straighter, her black and pink nails tapping the table. “Is anything going to change then? Other than Reagan staying?”

Noah gave a shrug. “Nothing I can think of. I don’t see why anything has to change.”

I’d missed Allison walking over to Noah during all the chaos. She sidled up to him, tugging his sleeve. “Can I have my bath now?”

“Sure,” Noah said, standing up and scooping her into his arms. None of the other kids followed.

Everyone broke away to go back to their business. Everyone but me and Pippa, who both stayed sitting at the table. The high of the joyous occasion started fading, leaving me with the worries that came with a complicated Mending. Humans didn’t have to worry about the politics of a wolf pack. I’d have to navigate that, and I barely knew how to be a person.

“You okay?” Pippa asked.

I lifted my shoulders in a lazy shrug. “I just barely got away from a really bad situation. I guess I’m a little worried.”

“About?”

“I never got the chance to find out who I actually am. Then I get free, and the first thing that happens to me is getting to Mend. What if I should have been alone for a while first?” I never got the chance to figure out how to take care of myself. Now, I probably never would.

Pippa adjusted in her chair, leaning toward me. “You want my opinion?”

“Yeah.”

After a beat, she said, “You can’t change what happened. You’re Mended and that’s that. If it happened, that means it was meant to happen.”

I didn’t want to give her too many details about my past, but I needed to explain what the trouble was. “I worry that it’s not healthy. I lost my sister, and now I’ve replaced her.”

“It’s not the same thing though. If it makes you feel better, I don’t think Noah really knows who he is either. Maybe you guys can find out together.”

“Is it healthy to live so dependently on another person?”

“I have no idea. You know it’ll die down. You’ll be extra dependent on each other for a while, but it’ll even out.”

She had a point. Everything would be extra intense for a little bit, but it never lasted forever. Eventually, I wouldn’t have the all-consuming desire I had to go find Noah and be in the same room as him.

“I’ll see you later,” I told Pippa. “I need to go…”

“Yeah,” she said when I didn’t finish the sentence.

Even if I didn’t know which bathroom Noah would be in, I could still feel him. It was weird. I’d had a little inkling of it before we’d actually Mended, but nothing like this. He existed like a beacon in my head, always flashing with the direction I had to go to find him. Which meant he knew I was coming, even before I knocked on the door.

“Come in!” I heard Allison shout.

I cracked the bathroom door open, seeing Noah on his knees as he washed his sister’s hair. She waved at me, splashing water all over Noah. He laughed at her, telling her to sit back down so she wouldn’t get hurt.

“Are you okay?” Noah asked. It made me wonder if he could feel that I wasn’t.

“I wanted to talk to you a little about… stuff.”

He poured another pail of water over Allison’s head, cleaning off the last of the shampoo. “Do you want to wait until we’re alone?”

We couldn’t exactly get real alone time in a house full of kids. “I think this is okay.” I sat on the edge of our tub while Noah did the same on the other side. Allison was left to play in the bubbles, getting her fill before naptime.

“So…” Noah started.

I wrung my hands, staring at them. “You’re sure you’re not upset about you and me?”

“I’m not.”

“Because it would be okay if you were. I get that this is a really bad time, and you aren’t really into other people. This seems like the kind of thing that might be a nightmare to you.”

I heard him inhale, holding it before he let go. “I think I need to get used to it. It’s going to take time.”

We both went quiet for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to say. I would have called it awkward, but it didn’t feel that way anymore. I wondered if it was even possible to feel awkward with your Mend. I couldn’t imagine it. Even with my and Noah’s relationship being rocky, I still saw home when I looked at him.

“Are you coming with me when I leave?” Noah asked.

I looked sideways at him. “I didn’t realize I was invited.”

He crossed his arms, staring at the floor. “I think it would be… difficult… leaving you home right now. I understand if it would be hard for you to be around so many strangers. You don’t have to come.”

“I will,” I said, my relief clear. “I want to go.”